Lytic growth of phage

The following cartoon shows the stages of the lytic life cycle of a typical dsDNA bacteriophage.

Each of the stages of infection requires sufficient time expression of the proper genes and function of the gene products. The following figure shows the course of a lytic phage infection observed under the microscope. (You can see a real time video clip of the lysis at http://www.cellsalive.com.)

The stages of infection can be followed using a one-step growth curve. The results of one-step growth curves for a phage capable of growing lytically on the infected host, a phage that can infect but cannot lyse the host, a phage that cannot adsorb to the host, and a control without host cells are shown in the figure below.